When Trevino said he couldn't win - June 17, 1987

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, June 17, 2012

Lee Trevino, right, and a marshal clear leaves away from the ball after Trevino's shot landed in the brush on the 6th hole on June 18, 1987. Trevino took a double bogey 6 on the hole. UPI/Blake Sell

Lee Trevino, right, and a marshal clear leaves away from the ball after Trevino's shot landed in the brush on the 6th hole on June 18, 1987. Trevino took a double bogey 6 on the hole. UPI/Blake Sell

Photo: Blake Sell, UPI

When Trevino said he couldn't win - June 17, 1987

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Here's a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle's archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.

1987

June 17: Lee Trevino said yesterday that he has no chance to win this week's U.S. Open and that when he turns 50, he will no longer play in the event.

"I can't win here because I haven't been playing and I'm almost 48 years old." Trevino said. "I can't compete with these guys. I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid. I can't win."

Trevino played his first U.S. Open in 1966 at the Olympic Club - site of this week's tournament - and he likened it to the Augusta National course, the home of the Masters. "You have to hit the ball high here and I can't do that," Trevino said.

Trevino has made it clear in recent years he hopes to be a major factor on the seniors tour when he turns 50 on Dec. 1, 1989. Trevino said he has certain nostalgia about the Olympic Club since it was the site of his first Open appearance.

"I remember I was up by the clubhouse," he said, "and Arnold Palmer drove up. The people almost ran over me to get his autograph. The same thing happened to me the year I won Rochester (1968). I was close to the lead every day and, after the round, I would sit in a golf cart and drink beer and people would walk right by. They thought I was the guy who ran the cart barn."

1962

June 18: Personal effects in plastic bags picked out of the Bay were definitely linked to Clarence Anglin, one of the trio of escaped Alcatraz convicts, The Chronicle learned yesterday. There was a receipt for a $10 money order made out to Anglin by a Rachel Anglin and cashed by the Alcatraz post office. The find was made by the Corps of Army Engineers' debris boat, the Coyote. The boat, equipped with a large scoop underneath serves as a sort of vacuum cleaner for the bay and is skippered by Captain Edward Thompson Jr. of Fairfax. The Coyote picked up the evidence a mile northeast of Alcatraz, off Point Blunt on Angel Island. Captain Thompson found that the bags were apparently fashioned out of the same rubber raincoat from which a sleeve was found floating in the bay. The sleeve was presumably inflated as a waterwing. Scattered in the bag were some 50 to 60 pictures of a woman - nothing pornographic, not barracks-type pinups. "There were about 15 pictures of an attractive brunette, all of the same girl," said the skipper. "I suppose she was the girlfriend of one of these fellows. The rest looked like they came out of a family album - children, grownups, elderly people." There were also a lot of names and addresses. Captain Thompson turned the evidence over to the FBI. Clarence Anglin, and his bank-robbing brother, John and a bank burglar Frank L. Morris, fled The Rock after digging their way out of the concrete cellblocks with spoons and leaving life-like dummies in their cell cots. The family snapshots and mementos - flotsam scooped out of the bay - were the only other signs they left behind.

1937

June 22: Gas chambers authorized by the California Legislature to supplant execution by hanging have already been designed. They will be constructed by the man who designed and built the lethal chamber for Nevada. Announcement that he had contracted for the building of the death chambers was made in San Jose yesterday by Captain D. B. Castle. The California execution chambers to be installed at Folsom and San Quentin penitentiaries will be 60 feet square and eight feet high, Captain Castle said. They will be unfurnished, except for a chair in which the condemned man is strapped. A jar of acid rests beneath the chair, said Captain Castle, and into the acid are dropped pellets of cyanide by means of a mechanism tripped from the outside. Ventilators at top and bottom will carry away the fumes when the execution has been completed. Captain Castle said he got the idea of cyanide gas in executions from his work as a termite and pest exterminator.

"There is no person whose name is more repugnant to fair-minded persons than that of Andrew Carnegie, whose vast fortune was accumulated at the expense of every rule of humanity, thousands of persons in his employ having tolled long hours for a mere pittance, and on more than one occasion being assaulted and shot and a number killed for rebelling against the industrial slavery imposed upon them. We join in the protest against bringing shame and humiliation upon the fair name of San Francisco by having it share in the ill-gotten wealth of Andrew Carnegie to build him a monument." {sbox}

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